Red Velvet Switch Review

Note: In order to keep everything as fully transparent as possible, I feel inclined to inform all readers that I am currently sponsored by Dangkeebs as of the time of writing this review and have been sponsored for quite some time. With that in mind, though, this review was conducted entirely of my own will without any notice to Dangkeebs. They also did not receive an advanced copy of the review, editorial notes, nor in any way, shape, or form affected this review. All opinions here, as long winded as they may be, are expressly mine and mine alone.

After having survived what felt like a never ending week of work, I’m glad to say that I’m finally back home and more or less in my routine of content once again. Last weekend you may have noticed that there was no social media or measurement updates, and that was largely due to me attending Chicago’s own ‘That Windy City Keeb Meet’! For the second consecutive year in a row, I couch surfed my way into Chicago and got to attend their meetup on the National Day of Keyboard Meetups. Seemingly getting bigger and better year over year, over 150 people showed up in force to the meetup with high end keyboards, artisan collectors, and even a few switch collectors absolutely packing the space where it was hosted. Unlike the previous year, though, my great buddy from SwitchOddities and I were presented with the chance to do a ‘panel discussion’ like has been becoming increasingly popular at larger keyboard meetups in recent years. So, without any hesitation as to whether or not we would do it, we jumped on the opportunity and got to present to a full room of enthusiasts “The Untold Tales of Unsold Switches” – a winding presentation of different prototypes, switch designs, and color attempts that never made it to the point of being released to the community at large. Interspersed throughout the dozens of switches we presented that fit that theme, we also got to debut four entirely never before seen switches (a trio and then a single separate one) which not only haven’t been released yet but will be coming soon enough from their respective vendors. While this certainly made for a special opportunity for those who were able to attend, the organizers of the meetup were more than kind in recording the endeavor for posterity and have posted it to YouTube – meaning all of you here will also get a chance to experience the presentation for yourselves too.

To say that this panel presentation for the Chicago meetup was anything short of an incredible experience to get to be a part of would be an absolute lie on my part. Switch prototypes and failed plans for MX-style switches is something that I’ve been wanting to put into writing on for some time now, though alas it seems to continue to elude me month after month. (At least I finally was able to scratch ‘The Hirose Cherry MX Rainbow’ off of my bucket list last month though.) So while we indefinitely wait for me to get around to putting pen to paper about that topic, at least we have some video content to make up for it in the meantime. Further adding to the eventual content pile, I picked up some rather interesting keyboard-related stuff on the way back from Chicago that I’m certainly planning on doing a writeup on at some point as well. The teaser as to what that is, though, will have to remain spoiled only to my loyal Patreon audience for now, though even they will have to wait just as long for me get around to actually putting together some words on it. Trust me though, it’ll be more than worth the wait. In the meantime, as is tradition for my bigger meetup visits, enjoy a couple photos of some of my favorite things that I saw at the Chicago meetup before we dive headlong into this review.

**Figure 1:** A very dedicated collection of 'Tree' artisans from Chicago's own Wheatkeys.

**Figure 2:** Stenography device brought by octonite who also set up the panel discussion recordings!

**Figure 3:** Large functional 3D-printed switches from Sneakbox that had insanely huge springs in them.

**Figure 4:** The Hunger Works Studio master box as brought by Binge - a truly historical display of artisan keycap history.

Switch Background

Ever since Dangkeebs found its footing in the mechanical keyboard community, they’ve seemingly been known for one thing above all else – their switch offerings. While they do stock things other than just switches, I think, it’s the pages upon pages of releases and early adoption of the KTT brand that first brought me in contact with them and has helped make them as recognizable of a name as they are now. Further strengthening their reputation in the switch market, Dangkeebs has produced quite a few different switch ‘families’ over the years, often times leaning into specialized names, stickers, and even fancy packaging to make those releases stand out from the rest of the crowd. A lot of people in the community will likely readily point to the ‘Milk’ family of switches as Dangkeebs’ best example of this. First started all the way back in 2021, Dangkeebs’ Milk switches have come in four different flavors with both tactile and linear offerings in strawberry, melon, banana, and lychee that all have fancy, decorative Japanese-style milk bottles to match their theme and color. They even took this packaging a step further and leaned into the milk bottle switch meme by releasing an ‘Invisiblend’ flavor of milk “switches” as an April Fools Day joke in 2023. Now while I wouldn’t blame people at all for thinking of these milk bottles as some of Dangkeebs’ best work when it comes to switch families and branding, I’d personally put the “DK Creamery” family up there as a worthwhile contender for that throne.

**Figure 5:** My partial collection of Dangkeebs Milk switch display milk bottles.

**Figure 6:** My much more complete collection of Dangkeebs DK Creamery switch ice cream containers.

First announced in early 2023, the ‘DK Creamery’ is a family of switches that has grown into a recurring series of premium KTT-made switch offerings thematically based on specialty ice cream flavors. When I had initially debuted this family in my Cookies n’ Cream Switch Review, I had made clear that I wasn’t sure what the release plans were for switches in the ‘DK Creamery’ beyond the medium weight tactile that they had started with. Well, as you can see above, its clear that there were quite a few plans in the work even that far back. Eschewing more traditional ice cream flavors like Vanilla and Chocolate, the DK Creamery now has five flavors in its lineup including Cookies n’ Cream, Blueberry Swirl, Birthday Cake, Cookie Dough, and most recently Red Velvets. Rather than going line by line through each of these offerings in this background section, though, I think it would be best to summarize them by the measurements that I’ve collected for them thus far and skip right into perhaps the most intriguing of the offerings to date in the Red Velvets. Trust me when I say there’s still plenty left about them to fill out the rest of this background section even in spite of condensing the rest of these switches to a table…

**Figure 7:** Table of DK Creamery switches and their stats as of the time of writing this review.

While my bias towards the Red Velvets is plainly obvious here as it is the switch I’ve specifically chosen to dedicate a full review to, there’s quite a bit of subtle details in their context that makes them stand out from the rest of the pack in the Creamery family. The first of many of these points worth noting is that they are silent tactile switches – something which is becoming increasingly rare in this day and age of MX-style switches. As acoustics, and those that have particular onomatopoeic terms associated with them which I won’t say here, are becoming more and more focused on by the community at large, we’ve generally seen a decline in ‘silent’ switch offerings. In spite of brands LICHICX doing their best to innovate on silent switches and provide high quality switch offerings in general, even they’ve only really stuck to silent linears unless pushed to make silent tactiles by collaborations with vendors and/or designers, leaving silent tactiles an increasingly endangered species to naturally encounter. However, the Red Velvet switches aren’t just a departure from the norm because they are silent tactiles, though, it’s also because they are KTT-made silent tactile switches.

For those of you who are not as plugged into the “switch matrix” as some collectors are who try and diligently track even the most minute of details about switches, KTT simply doesn’t make switches outside of linears and tactiles. Even as their catalogue has grown well into the double digits and likely surpassed over 100 different switches over the years, only a very small handful of standouts exist in the other types of switches outside of linears and tactiles. For clickies, KTT has made their Gold and Purple Sauce switches, as well as Low Profile Whites and Akko’s Blue V2 switches. As for silent linears, there are only two offerings they’ve ever made – the DK Creamery’s Cookie Dough switches and Akko’s Haze Pinks. And yet to the best of my knowledge, not a single silent tactile has ever been produced by KTT prior to the Red Velvet switches here today. Further tumbling down the rabbit hole of strange and interesting, though, this historical note about the Red Velvets being the first silent tactile made by KTT will come with an asterisk already attached to it before the ink has hardly dried on their entry into the history books. The caveat eating away at these being the true first silent tactile of KTT’s catalogue comes down to a simple fact that we have reason to believe that the stems that give these switches their silent and tactile nature aren’t even made by KTT in the first place!

**Figure 8:** That's right - these silent tactile stems right here.

In recent months, switch collectors and enthusiasts have begun noticing similarities in the designs and structures of certain switch components that seem to exist across company lines that have never been crossed before. While its not uncommon for prebuilt keyboard brands like Razer or Akko to have had their switches produced by several different manufacturers over the years, to see identical structures and components in factory branded OEM switches from several different manufacturers is basically unheard of historically. No, I’m not implying that the Red Velvets are necessarily connected to the blurry line separating HMX and KTT that I previously covered in my Raptor MX Extreme Switch Review either; It goes much deeper than that. What the switch collectors have specifically noticed is that silent switches made by Huano, Jerrzi, HMX, and KTT all appear to feature rubber dampening pads in the slider rails of their stems that are shaped in the exact same, uniquely designed fashion not seen before these releases. In fact, this similarity isn’t just between one or two switches as the list has grown to now at least include Keychron K Pro Silent Browns, Jerrzi Mingyu, Jerrzi Silent Peach, Jerrzi Honey Bean, SP Star Polestar Pink Pros, and several Philikey switches as can be seen in the component photos below from SwitchOddities. Adding one more to the list, I’m sure you’ve already probably put it together by now that the DK Creamery Red Velvet switches also feature a sound dampening pad in their stems that is identical to all of these switches.

**Figure 9:** Components of the Keychron K Pro Silent Brown switches. (Photo from SwitchOddities)

**Figure 10:** Components of the Jerrzi Mingyu switches. (Photo from SwitchOddities)

**Figure 11:** Components of the Philikey Silent Peach switches. (Photo from SwitchOddities)

**Figure 12:** Components of the SP Polestar Pink switches. (Photo from SwitchOddities)

Despite how it feels like I may be pointing towards some grand, overarching conspiracy here or interconnectedness between these manufacturers that simply didn’t exist prior to learning that information above, I actually believe there’s a pretty reasonable explanation for this overlap in designs. While I’ve not fleshed out this idea all that well in reviews before, I’ve tried to hint at a personal belief that we as a community are beginning to see switch part manufacturers that are popping up, producing single parts of switches, and then feeding those parts into larger switch manufacturing companies. There’s no denying that MX-style switches are near their peak of availability, popularity, and degree of manufacturing competition, and so rather than compete in the space with giants who have established themselves years ago, new companies are sprouting up to try and take a piece of that market pie by only producing parts of switches rather than engineering and manufacturing entirely new ones from the ground up. By then selling these parts to established manufacturers like KTT or Huano, these smaller companies can collect some degree of profit while the larger manufacturers can save on R&D costs associated with designing a stem they’ve never made in house before – like a silent tactile one. The connectedness of all these seemingly disparate switches points to an unnamed, but very much real ‘stem manufacturer’ that is making stems to be included in other companies’ switches. While this will inevitably make things difficult for people like me to track, it does open up a new paradigm about how switches are produced that I think we all really need to start considering when trying to figure out where our switches come from. For ease of clarity, I’ve mocked up a small chart below in Figure 13 that sort of captures how I view it in my head, at least. So while the Red Velvet housings were most definitely made by KTT, this clear overlap in stem design to other switches established above points to KTT having bought these stems from this unnamed stem manufacturer in order to more cheaply and readily produce their first silent tactile switches. To only further strengthen my point, I have also flat out asked if this ostensible conspiracy theory was correct and was told by trusted sources that I was correct. Perhaps the only thing not mentioned above, though, is that KTT made it pretty clear in advance that this is what they were doing in the design and manufacturing of the Red Velvet switches, meaning that this is a known thing that is happening rather than some secretive cost-cutting practice.

**Figure 13:** A personal thought as to how switches may be being produced in the near future. Each color of lines represents a hypothetical switch.

As for what I can more cleanly and definitively substantiate about the Red Velvet switches, these switches first debuted in July of 2024 and have only recently started arriving to original groupbuy participants as of the time of writing this review. While my personal batch of them from the initial groupbuy shipped on July 16th, these polycarbonate over nylon silent tactile switches are currently available as an in stock item on Dangkeebs’ website at $5 per pack of 10 switches, or $0.50 per switches. (Purchases of 70 or more switches are eligible for the fancy ice cream container packaging as seen above in Figure 6.) Being the fifth entry to the DK Creamery lineup of switches in only about two years, its very likely that these switches will remain available and accessible for the foreseeable future like the other aforementioned flavors. Much like I said in the Cookies n’ Cream Switch Review, though, I’m uncertain as to what the future plans look like for these switches or the DK Creamery as a family.

Red Velvet Performance

Appearance

At the highest level, the DK Creamery Red Velvet switches come in a fully opaque red over slightly darker red housing scheme with white stems that very much meets the colorway expectations for something invoking red velvet ice cream and baked goods. While there have been other Red Velvet switches before this one, such as the CBKBD Red Velvets, and other switches which come in fully red housings with white stems, such as AEBoards Raed V2s, the combination of these features with the ‘DK’ centered logo on the nameplate makes these switches recognizable with some close inspection. While I can’t recall the explicit point in time in which this ‘DK’ nameplate first made its appearance, it is present on all DK Creamery switches in my collection except for the Cookies n’ Cream switches first released back in 2021. All other details worth noting in the appearance of the Red Velvet switches occurs at the sub-part level and may be found in the paragraphs and photos below.

**Figure 14:** Red Velvet switches and their components.

Looking first at the opaque red, polycarbonate top housings of the Red Velvet switches, these appear identical in nearly all design features to that of the Cookies n’ Cream switches which came before them. The one separating point between the housings of the Red Velvets and that of the Cookies n’ Creams is that of the aforementioned centered ‘DK’ logo present in the nameplate of only the Red Velvets. Both top housings otherwise come in four-pin attachment style, have a wide rectangular LED slot with centered circular indentation, and mold markings located on the front lip of this LED slot. The mold markings for KTT switch housings of this type come in a faintly raised single capital letter marking on the far left-hand side of the lip and a two digit number on the far-right hand side. Internally, the housings are pretty barren, with mold ejector circles located around the outer rim of the housing as is common to pretty much every switch. The Red Velvets and Cookies n’ Creams even share similarities down to an asymmetrical post which can be seen below the leaf slot gap in the far right-hand side of the housing. Much like in the review where this was first noted, I don’t even remotely have a clue what this is for and doubt that it serves any functional impact on the switch’s performance.

**Figure 15:** Red Velvet top housing exterior design showing centered 'DK' nameplate, long rectangular LED slot, and pair of mold markings located in the corners of the front LED slot lip.

**Figure 16:** Red Velvet top housing interior design showing lack of unique features and striking similarity to the DK Creamery Cookies n' Cream switches.

Moving next to the white, dustproof stems of the Red Velvet switches, we are greeted with quite a few design quirks and marketing notes which have not been covered previously in reviews before. On the marketing end of things, the stems are marketed as being made of POM (which is common and expected) and “TPE silencers” (which is strange). TPE, to the best of what I can guess, stands for “thermoplastic elastomer”, a term which is broad enough to mean a lot of things and indicate very little. It would be equally comparable here to just say that the top housings were made out of “special plastic” rather than polycarbonate. Completely sidestepping my internal screaming as an engineer with a background in plastics, the actual designs of the stems and their dampening pads is a bit odd. Overall, the stems come in at a traditional length of about 12.56 mm in total, and feature rounded interior dustproof edges. The silencing mechanism is similar to that of traditional silent tactile and linear switches, with a dampening pad embedded in the slide rails on either side of the stem. Unlike those traditionally rectangular dampening pads, though, the Red Velvet stems have partially enclosed pads that start rectangular at the top and form fully circular pads at the bases of the slide rails. Both the shape of these pads, as well as their uniquely enclosed nature as can be seen below in Figures 17-19 is what initially made them recognizable as having been present in other switches. Beyond these features, though, the only other detail worth noting here is the presence of a very fine amount of factory lube that was present on all sides of the stem and easily removed.

**Figure 17:** Front and back side of Red Velvet stems showing normal stem length, heavy dampening pads attached to either slider rail, and large, dustproof walls around the keycap mounting point.

**Figure 18:** Alternative view of the base of the Red Velvet stem silencing pads showing their round bottoms unlike the traditionally thin and rectangular shaped pads in other silent switches.

**Figure 19:** Side profile of Red Velvet stems showing subtle tactile bump and interesting silencing pad attachment style as seen in numerous switches above.

Finally arriving at the slightly darker red, nylon bottom housings of the Red Velvet switches, these too feature a striking overlap in detail with the Cookies n’ Cream switches as that of the top housings. Internally, the housings feature dampening platforms at the base of the bottom housing, a strong south side spring collar, and mold ejector circles along the left- and right-hand sides of the upper housing rim. Externally, the Red Velvets come in only 5-pin/PCB mount variety with three different mold markings located in between the metal PCB pins and directly underneath both PCB mounting pins as can be seen below in Figure 21. Like numerous KTT switches before them, the mold marking in between the PCB mounting pins comes in the form of an inverted, double digit number. The other two markings appear as an ‘L’ and 180-degree rotated ‘L’ which are more likely to be symbols or markings than if they are an explicit mold-marking letter. (I’ve also never seen any other letter present in this slot on KTT switches than ‘L’) The similarity in details between these and the Cookies n’ Cream switch bottom housings suggest that the molds used for these two switches may be identical, if not directly based on the design in the Cookies n’ Cream molds.

**Figure 20:** Red Velvet bottom housing internal design showing dampening pads at the base of the slider rails, a south side spring collar, and faint traces of factory lubing.

**Figure 21:** Red Velvet bottom housing external design showing PCB mounting pins and trio of mold markings seen in other KTT and DK Creamery switch releases.

Push Feel

While I’ve already covered above just how rare it is to encounter a silent tactile switch in the wild in this day and age, slowly approaching them on the endangered species list is that of tactile switches with extremely light bumps. Much to my surprise, the Red Velvet switches manage to hit both lists, coming in not only as silent tactile switches, but also ones with a very small, softly tactile bump. Starting shortly before the midpoint of the downstroke and ending soon thereafter, the bumps of these switches are light enough to instantly remind me of Cherry MX Browns and Invokeys’ Blueberry Chiffon switches. I was much less surprised in the feeling of these switches after having collected the force curves for them, as their curves almost match to the number exactly what I feel in hand with these switches. Further strengthening the claim to these being lightly tactile, the peak force in the force curve below is only 51.3 gf, which is perfectly straddling the downstroke starting force of around 40 gf and peak bottom out force of 61.0 grams. Perhaps the only difference between what I feel in hand and measure in the force curves for these switches is that of the bottom out, which feels much closer to the traditional, full 4.00 mm travel than the roughly half millimeter shorter travel distance that is measured. As for the smoothness of the Red Velvets, the light factory lubing does carry a pretty substantial amount of weight and produces a smooth experience that is decently consistent across the batch and only produces a subtly leathery scratch in a small number of switches.

**Figure 22:** Force curve for stock Red Velvet switch.

As for the silent portion of the Red Velvet switches, I am a touch less impressed than I have been with all of the other rare features that I’ve stressed on in the last paragraph. While one could readily refer to a silent tactile with a lightly tactile bump as a ‘unicorn’ in 2024 given its rare and exotic nature, one could just as easily refer to the “exotic” and “rare” nature of the silencing pads used in these switches as a ‘dinosaur’. While there is not nearly as much mushiness as I recall having been present in silent tactile and linear switches of old, I did forget just how much dampening pads embedded in the slider rails like these cause the bottom outs of switches to squish and feel jelly-like. The worse impact of these dampening pads is not so much their elasticity, as they are quite hard and don’t deform super readily, but the combination of them with the factory lubing that does present in an occasional, inconsistent sticky or grippy like feeling just at the start of bottoming out. Even though this isn’t really all that noticeable under normal typing speeds or conditions, the fact that it is even present does remind me why companies like LICHICX are going through the efforts that they are in order to move away from the dampening mechanisms of old.

Sound

All things considered, the Red Velvet switches perform well on this metric as silent tactiles insofar that they don’t produce all that much noise. The housing materials used in these switches may as well not even matter at all, as the dampening pads eliminate nearly all housing collision noise save for a bit of thinner, muted popping tones that can be heard in the topping out of some switches. Unlike much more aggressive silent tactile switches, the lack of aggression in the bump and light factory lubing of the switches does well to prevent any leaf ping or scratch when ran across. Really the only sound present in the Red Velvet switches outside of the housing collisions is that of a slight sticky tone that occurs at a similar point at the start of the bottoming out that was noted in the push feel notes above. Like most other errant sound features in a switch, this is exacerbated at faster typing speeds or with more forceful typing, though under normal to light typing conditions it’s not nearly as noticeable as you might think. While I’m not sure I can pinpoint an exact reasoning for this occurring, my best guess is that it is related to the light factory lubing present on all sides of the stem and the initial give of the “TPE” stem dampening pads interacting to produce this tone. I suppose this is a little bit more forgivable when considering that this same factory lubing largely eliminates any scratch noise from the Red Velvet batch that I received.

Wobble

While certainly not bad in a historical context, the worst performance metric of the Red Velvet switches relative to that of other switches released in 2024 is that of their stem wobble. A noticeable, equal-magnitude amount of N/S and E/W direction stem wobble is present in these switches that could certainly bother some users. This would be especially highlighted by the use of taller keycap profiles with the Red Velvet switches, such as that of MT3 or SA.

Measurements

If you’re into this level of detail about your switches, you should know that I have a switch measurement sheet that logs all of this data, as well as many other cool features which can be found under the ‘Archive’ tab at the top of this page or by clicking on the card above. Known as the ‘Measurement Sheet’, this sheet typically gets updated weekly and aims to take physical measurements of various switch components to compare mold designs on a brand-by-brand basis as well as provide a rough frankenswitching estimation sheet for combining various stems and top housings.

**Figure 24:** Numerical details regarding the stock Red Velvet switch force curve diagram.

Have you ever wanted to be bombarded with more switch data than you’ve ever seen at any point in your life before? Consider checking out the ‘Force Curve Repository’ hosted on my GitHub that contains all force curves that I take both within and outside of these full-length reviews. In addition to having these graphs above, I have various other versions of the graphs, raw data, and my processed data all available for over 1000 different switches for you to use however you see fit. Check it out via the ‘Archive’ tab at the top of this page or by clicking any of the force curve cards above.

Break In

Break In Notes

17,000 Actuations

- After only 17,000 actuations, the very fine amount of factory lubing present in the Red Velvet switches appears to migrate and almost altogether eliminate the grippy feeling start to the bottom out that I noted in the stock form of the switches.

- As is common among most switches subjected to this break in testing, the Red Velvet switches increased in stem wobble a tiny bit in both N/S and E/W directions after 17,000 actuations.

34,000 Actuations

- Being pushed out to 34,000 actuations, the stem wobble of the Red Velvets increases a bit further, being a bit more loose than the 17,000 actuation batch and noticeably looser than that of the stock forms of these switches.

- Surprisingly, there isn’t really any change in the push feeling or sound of these switches broken out this far as compared to those broken in to 17,000 actuations.

51,000 Actuations

- Out at 51,000 actuations, the lube migration that was noted all the way back at 17,000 actuations begins to subtly affect the sound of some switches. Those broken in thus far did appear to sound a bit louder with respect to their topping out sound, though in all reality this could be a batch to batch variation thing more so than something actually occurring with the switches.

**Figure 26:** Comparative force curve diagram showing no distinctive trend in change of the Red Velvet switch force curve diagrams throughout the process.

Comparison Notes to Other Notable Silent Tactile Switches

Note – These are not aimed at being comprehensive comparisons between all factors of these switches as this would simply be too long for this writeup. These are little notes of interest I generated when comparing these switches to the Red Velvet switches side by side.

Invokeys x Alas Daydreamer

- In terms of overall stem wobble, the Invokeys x Alas Daydreamer switches have noticeably less N/S and E/W direction stem wobble than the DK Creamery Red Velvet switches.

- As can be seen in the force curve comparison of these two switches below, these are pretty drastically different tactiles. The Red Velvets are clearly the more subtle, small tactile bump switch akin to something like Cherry MX Browns whereas the heavier tactile bump at the start of the downstroke in the Daydreamers makes them more similar to something like Zealios/Zilents.

- Without any sort of leathery scratchiness to their tone, the Red Velvets are a touch quieter than the Daydreamers and have a much smooth consistency to their tone in both stock and broken in forms than the Daydreamers.

Kailh Pro Midnight Light Yellow

- Even though the tactile bump magnitude for these two switches appears to be more similar than some of the other comparisons on this list, the Pro Midnight Light Yellows still feel quite a bit more forceful and strong in their tactile bump than the Red Velvets. I suspect some part of this has to be due to their bump being located earlier on in the downstroke than the Red Velvets, though that is a bit speculative.

- Both because of the factory lubing present and their less aggressive tactile bump, the Red Velvets are noticeably more quiet than the Light Yellows in their stock form.

- In terms of both N/S and E/W direction stem wobble, the Red Velvets have quite a bit more give to them than the Kailh Pro Midnight Light Yellows.

IDOBAO Elf Tactile-T1

- Of all of the silent tactiles on this comparison list, the IDOBAO Elf Tactile-T1s are the only ones which are noticeably softer and less tactile than that of the Red Velvets. After having sat through writing an entire review on the Red Velvets and marveling at just how barely tactile they are, the Elf Tactile-T1s here almost don’t feel tactile at all.

- Due in large part to the lack of aggressive tactile mechanisms in both of these switches, both switches are almost equivalently silent on the average. The Elf Tactile-T1s, however, have a much greater spread in variability from switch to switch than the Red Velvets.

-
There is a touch less N/S and E/W direction stem wobble in the IDOBAO Elf Tactile-T1 switches than the DK Creamery Red Velvets.

Haimu Whisper

- Even though the force curve comparison between the Whisper and Red Velvet switches seems most similar to that of the Invokeys x Alas Daydreamers above, these switches surprisingly feel as if their tactile bump is in roughly the same place in the downstroke. The Red Velvets, though, are still the much more subtle of these two switches in terms of that tactility.

- With less contribution from housing collisions to their overall sound profile, the Red Velvets are a tiny bit quieter than that of the Haimu Whisper switches.

- With respect to their bottoming out collisions, the Haimu Whispers feel a tiny bit more firm, forceful, and aggressively dampened than the comparatively softer, slower-to-compress feeling of the dampening pads in the Red Velvets.

MODE Anthracite

- In reverse fashion from the Haimu Whisper switch comparison above, the tactile bumps of the Red Velvets and MODE Anthracites feel more or less similar in magnitude, though just in different places in the downstroke. The tactile bump in the Anthracites both feels and measures earlier in the downstroke than that of the Red Velvets.

- There is a tiny bit more stem wobble in the Red Velvet switches than the Anthracites in both the N/S and E/W directions.

- With respect to their overall sound profile, the MODE Anthracites are surprisingly more silent than the Red Velvets and arguably more silent than any of the other silent tactile switches on this list.

Durock Shrimp

- Of all of the switches on this comparison list, the Durock Shrimp are the loudest and least subtle of the silent tactiles – both in terms of the push feeling of their tactile bump and in terms of their overall sound profile.

- Surprisingly, even though the Durock Shrimp switches were made several years before that of the Red Velvet switches, these two switches have comparable amounts of N/S and E/W direction stem wobble.

- The Shrimp switches really do well to highlight the mushiness issue that was present with the old style of rubber sound dampening pads in silent switches and does a decent job at showing just how much better these new, third party stems that KTT is using are at preventing this issue.

Scores and Statistics

Note – These scores are not necessarily completely indicative of the nuanced review above. If you’ve skipped straight to this section, I can only recommend that you at least glance at the other sections above in order to get a stronger idea of my opinion about these switches.